Read the series introduction here

Trend #7 – Network Operations Integration

The convergence of formerly distinct network technology platforms – take telephony systems and LANs, for example – is precipitating a major networking operations transition, including alterations in IT organizational structure.

Gartner recommends network managers adopt an ITIL approach, creating an organization centered around processes that deliver IT services. To enhance end-to-end IT service delivery, consider greater integration of the Network Operations Center (NOC) with IT infrastructure operations.

This trend is driving complex IT organization changes, subordinating technology to processes, with the ultimate goal of seamless service delivery across all of IT.

Trend #8 – IT (and Network) Services

Gartner prediction: by 2012 as many as 30 percent of large enterprises will define core business-oriented IT services, along with formal service-level agreements for each service. The number of enterprises engaged in this analysis will rise from 15% in 2010.

As a result of this trend, IT is tasked with proving its enterprise value and with identifying metrics for service levels.

Because IT organizations increasingly define their services as processes, it’s not always obvious how to demonstrate the value of a process to the business.

Gartner proposes IT organizations tackle this perception gap in three phases.

Phase 1: Consider how the enterprise actually uses IT

Example: processing enterprise applications and computations; storing/retrieving essential data; and communicating among employees, suppliers and customers to make decisions and complete transactions.

Phase 2: Subdivide each category into sub-categories

Example: communications can be divided into telephony, messaging, conferencing, collaboration and data transfer, and presence.

Phase 3: Analyze each sub-category in terms of service-level requirements

Example: establish service-level uptimes by sub-category (such as data transfer) and for various enterprise sites (such as headquarters, field office, home).

Gartner cautions IT organizations: “Our key principle is to define services in the way the enterprise uses them, not necessarily what IT delivers as processes.”

Coming next: Our Ten Most Challenging trends series concludes with trends #9, Automation, and #10, Cloud computing.

The CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) recently proposed changing billing rules, giving Canadian internet service providers permission to set a new bandwidth cap on their service plans, forcing customers to pay for every gigabyte they use above that cap!  Here are a couple of articles talking about it as well as a link to the actual decision from the CRTC’s web site:

http://blog.radarhill.com/2011/02/02/crtc-throttles-canadian-bandwidth/

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Clearing+confusion+over+caps/4221956/story.html

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-44.htm

Needless to say, there are a lot of people getting pretty upset about this decision.  There is even a tweet from Canadian Parliament member Tony Clement, implying that the Parliament will overturn the decision if the CRTC doesn’t back down.  Reading and following all of this got me thinking, what if I was charged based on usage?  From an ISP’s standpoint, I could see how this would be beneficial.  But would it really?

I am curious to hear what you folks think about this.  Are there folks out there that are currently billed this way?  How about organizations?  Are there ISP’s that currently bill this way?  If you are billed this way, how do you ensure that you are properly billed?

I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Jason (The WhatsUp Guru)

In wrapping up 2010, Time’s Techland issued a list of their Top 25 Tech Fails of the Year. We thought it was an interesting read and we picked a few of our favorites.

First off, and even more relevant with the recent announcement of the iPhone coming to Verizon in February, Consumer Reports names AT&T the worst cell phone carrier of 2010 and the only one to drop significantly in customer satisfaction as of late. (Thankfully I’m due for an upgrade on my Verizon smartphone soon.)

And how can we forget the BP Oil Rig Machinery disaster? It marked the largest accidental oil spill in history and was only subdued nearly 3 months after it had started, but not before leaking over 200 million gallons of oil into the ocean. Almost as embarrassing as the accident itself – the fruitless attempts to plug the oil well and CEO Tony Hayward’s halfhearted and often parodied apology.

Two particularly other noteworthy events of 2010 belong to Google. Google Wave and Google Buzz were ill-fated product releases with inherent issues that prevented viral success. Google Wave was meant to revolutionize online messaging by integrating Email and IM along with some other features, but it failed to find an audience. Invitation-only, it didn’t really offer anything that people couldn’t already do with their existing IM and Email clients and thus wasn’t worth telling your friends. The site remains active, but it’s up to users to access the now open-sourced code of future maintenance.

Google Buzz certainly created some Buzz, but not the kind Google was looking for. It turns out users don’t like exposing their Email address along with that of all of their contacts’ by default. The URL to one’s Buzz profile contained their Gmail username … oops. As a result, an $8.5 million class action suit was filed against them.

There were a few other noteworth fails in 2010 but you can read about them in the article. Let us know what your favorite is.

IT Automation

Each year sees an increase in the amount of IT tasks and operations that can be automated. 2011 will be no different, according to Ennio Carboni:

As the number of networked devices inside and outside the enterprise continue to explode – both in infrastructure (e.g. routers, switches and systems infrastructure supporting video, and wireless app delivery) and end point devices (especially mobile handhelds, tablets, and netbooks) – higher automation is necessary to maintain control of management costs. Equipment vendors, software publishers and end user IT organizations are embracing automation in many ways – building and deploying more intelligent network devices, using virtualization-led dynamic provisioning and configuration to meet variable demand profiles and attempting to build closed loop management systems that can react to infrastructure changes. We’ve seen this coming: technology replacing humans in the workplace – case-in-point, HP laying off 9000 workers from their datacenter services unit.

Configuration Management and IT Security

However, the rapid growth in the number and complexity of network devices does have its drawbacks. As networks grow, so do the vulnerabilities associated with their configuration and security. Analysts estimate that more than 60% of network outages are caused by manual configuration errors at an annual average rate of 30+ errors per device. This has tremendous impact on maintaining IT security and compliance with internal and external regulatory policies. As a consequence, analysts predict that configuration management and IT security tools will continue to see robust growth in 2011 (Check out slide 4.)

If your network is undergoing the growth now found across the board and you don’t already have a configuration management tool in place, 2011 is the year to change that. A good configuration management tool allows you to automate the process and reduce your chances of an outage, while also notifying you when and where an outage occurs so it can be rectified quickly with little downtime.